In depth and mini reviews of movies with a sprinkling of nostalgia and film music musings.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Gamera (1965) – MST3K Review

Summary:

In the arctic circle a few
jet fighters get into a bit of a mess. One of them goes down with a nuclear
warhead and crashes into the ice. This releases the giant jet powered turtle
GAMERA! Capable of flying around like a flaming Frisbee and able to devour and
shoot fire, this huge creature makes a beeline straight to Japan, where he
promptly terrorizes the populous.

A young boy, Kenny (Yoshiro
Uchida) has a close encounter with Gamera, but the huge reptile saves his life
instead of devouring him. Thus a bond is formed, with Kenny telling everyone
that Gamera is a good turtle, all the while Gamera is trashing Tokyo,
destroying natural resources and making a general mess of things. In the end the
worlds scientists come up with the ultimate plan, one last hope that may defeat
Gamera and save the world. But will
Kenny help or hinder the plan?

Movie Review:

I know what you’re thinking.
Is this a Godzilla rip-off? Pretty
much. Toho studios unleashed Godzilla on the screens in 1954, and really kicked
off the giant monster craze in Japan and around the world. But rival Japanese
studios all wanted a piece of that sweet pie and so they came up with their own
versions. Gamera came from the Daiei
studio and was fairly popular spawning many, many sequels. While both series
were targeted toward kids, Gamera especially
became a kiddie favorite, with his tag line becoming “Gamera – a friend to all
children”. The line is uttered for the first time here, but the rest of the
movie doesn’t really match the later flicks.

Gamera attacks a toy boat, toy boyt, toy bot!

Much like the first Godzilla film, Gamera comes across a bit more serious. It doesn’t dwell on the
horrors and fears of the atomic age like the older film did. But Gamera is the
real threat here. There was no other monster to face and thus turn Gamera into
the hero. Instead you get a lot of supporting human characters running around
trying to figure out ways to defeat Gamera.

This goes through all the
regular attempts. They get the military to come in and attempt to blow him up
with tanks and missiles. Soon it becomes apparent that all the explosions and
fire only feeds Gamera. So then they switch and try to use cold against him,
kind of like The Blob. But Gamera is
able to escape that trap by turning into his flying flaming discus form. They
finally use fire to lure Gamera to a rocket to Mars and send him flying into
space.

Truth be told, for the type
of movie it is, Gamera is pretty
solid. It’s got the amazingly goofy model work, the bad dubbing, the
nonsensical dialogue and the massive destruction. But because the plot points
are so familiar and the characters aren’t terribly interesting the whole thing
seems to move at a slower pace than it should. It’s also in black and white,
while the later films were all in a rich color. As much as I enjoy black and
white films, the Gamera series
really benefited from color. Also keep in mind that as the movies continued,
they became more outlandish and over the top, and thus more entertaining. You’re
also missing the classic theme song that becomes an earworm to anyone that
hears it. It’s interesting to see where the series started, but in the scope of
things it’s not the best of the bunch – kind of like Dr. No.

Kenny: one of the most annoyingly dubbed characters
in a Gamera film.

The real oddity of Gamera is the way Kenny is used. He’s
the only character who seems to actually have a more than one dimension. When
we meet him he is obsessed with his pet turtle Tibby. He keeps bringing Tibby
to school and will only draw pictures of the little beast. The other kids mock
him and he’s a bit of a loner. Well his parents force him to get rid of Tibby,
and that is when Gamera shows up.

Kenny nearly falls to his
doom when Gamera destroys the lighthouse that Kenny is hiding in. But Gamera
catches and saves him. Why? Well Kenny is convinced that Gamera is a friend to
all children, and therefore “a good turtle”. He spends the rest of the movie
bursting into rooms and telling every adult he can find (including military personnel
and scientists). They all think he’s a bit touched, and frankly the English
voice actor doesn’t help matters. In the end Kenny gets himself and other
people in constant peril as he runs around trying to talk to Gamera and tell
others that Gamera is good (while the huge beast is destroying everything and presumably
killing people).

"Check it out, it's Japanese Colonel Sanders!"

I’m not sure how we are
supposed to feel about this kid. He’s at once pathetic and incredibly annoying.
I don’t care if he puts himself in peril, but people keep constantly running
off to save his sorry ass and nearly get killed. I say if he wants to be with
Gamera so badly, let him go.

The English presentation
isn’t great. The dub is poor with many of the actors sounding bored, or having
trouble matching the lip flaps. The film was originally in a wide screen
presentation, and instead of panning around, they just hacked the frame up.
This leaves the viewer with scenes of people talking to nothing and other
scenes that seem to stretch out too long, because something is happening off on
the side that we can’t see. Aside from these issues, Gamera isn’t a bad film at all. I think later films like Gamera vs. Zigra and Gamera vs. Guiron are more interesting. But the real question is, did it
give enough for Joel and bots to use?

Episode Review:

"I don't think braces are going to help his dental issues."

Season 3 of the show is
known for it’s Japanese films ported over to the English speaking work via
Sandy Frank’s production company. It gave us some great episodes like Fugitive Alienand Time of the Apes. But for many fans of the show, the Gamera episodes are some of the real
favorites. They offer some great material being weird wild and rubbery all at
the same time.

Well the team at Best Brains
enjoyed riffing the movie back in their initial cable access season (back in
1988), that they sought it out for another go in 1991. This means they got to
rework some of the riffs, adjust the pacing a bit and give us a really solid
riffing.

Dr. Forrester introduces the
film as “A love story about a giant turtle and downtown Tokyo”. And he’s
actually correct, the riffing paints this as a love story between Kenny and Gamera,
and it works to wonderful effect. The best jokes come as Joel and bots try to
figure out what the hell is going on with Kenny. During a close up of Kenny as
he stares blankly at a child who is mocking him, the boys start chanting in a
style very similar to Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen. Later when Gamera randomly destroys the control tower at
an airport Joel observes, “Well there goes Kenny’s theory about Gamera being
good hearted.”

No, Neo-Tokyo is in "Akira" not "Gamera".

They also get some great
quips in when dealing with the special effects. As the army rolls in to
confront the turtle menace, and is represented by a bunch of model tanks and
vehicles Crow observes “Micro Machines at 12 o’clock and G.I. Joe is there!” I also
got a kick out of Joel realizing that Gamera wandering around on two legs ends
up strutting a lot like George Jefferson.

For the most part the
riffing is steady and solid, but the pacing of Gamera is on the slower side. There’s also the fact that Kenny is a
pretty annoying character and the movie spends so much time with him. Sure the
boys do a lot with it, but I always end up wishing the movie was over so I
wouldn’t have to listen to the little dork saying how “Gamera’s a good turtle”.

The host segments in this
one are a good time. Things start off with Joel and the bots doing some classic
theater warm up exercises. Having been a theater geek in high school and
college I got a kick out of that. For the invention exchange Joel creates a
take home version of the all you can eat salad bar. The mads create a vacuum
cleaner for your birdcage. It goes badly for Tweetie. At the first break Tom
Servo sings a touching tribute to Tibby the turtle. This is one of my favorite
songs from the series, and Crow even adds a hilarious verse. At the next break
Tom and Crow have had it with Kenny and try to work some voodoo on him. They
then ask the audience to write into the show and answer the important question,
“Kenny. What gives?” The next break has Gamera (Mike Nelson dressed in green)
visits and talks a bit about his past and what was with Kenny. The video below is Servo's ode to Tibby the turtle.

This is a solid episode, but
compared to the some of the later Gamera
exploits this one just doesn’t seem outlandish enough and a bit too slow. I
give it 3 flying turtles out of 5.

8 comments:

I remember seeing this many years go (pre-MST3K) and noting that Gamera was deadly, rather than his later friendly self. If he failed to kill Kenny, it just seemed one of those quirky counterintuitive moments that monsters sometimes have. (Hitler was kind to his dog.) Kenny seems misguided at best. Actually, curiosity about the difference between the original Gamera and later incarnations is the only reason I watched the movie through. The Dr. No comparison is a good one.

I agree. Later films did more to incorporate the children into the story. It was still unrealistic with the kids bossing around the scientists and military men, but it was a lot less bizarre then Kenny's whole relationship. And some of those later films played out like movies made by 10 year old boys on a sugar high. Great stuff and made for some fun riffing by Joel and the bots.

Well if you are a fan of Gamera, and you don't mind MST3K doing their treatment on the films, than that set is a great one. When I was writing for DVD Verdict it was nominated for boxset of the year upon it's release.

In my opinion the episodes get better and better as the season went along. "Gamera" is a solid 3 star episode. "Gamera vs. Barugon" is about a 3 and a half. "Gamera vs. Gaos" is about the same. But the best episode is "Gamera vs. Guiron". That movie is so out of this world wacky that it gives Joel and the bots plenty to work with. Probably four and a half or five starts for that one. "Gamera vs. Zigra is not quite as good, but is a solid four star episode in my book.

Shout! Factory released some great versions of the Gamera series. They all include both the subbed and dubbed versions (where available), if not you defiantly get the subbed version. They are all in their proper aspect ratios and have wonderfully cleaned up prints. I reviewed one set for DVD Verdict and was really impressed by the job they did on it. As much as I love MST3K, the versions the got to review really don't do the movies justice. The dubs are so poor and the hacked up frames can get really annoying.

Well you get trailers for each of the films included on the respective discs. A coupe of the episodes include special bumpers made by the crew of MST3K for Comedy Central when they were experimenting with the format of the show. Most of these are pretty funny, with Mike Nelson doing a really excellent parody of Jack Perkins. There are three documentaries in the set. The first is by the crew of MST3K talking about why they picked the Gamera films and how that selection was quite popular with fans and got a lot of viewers into the show. The next documentary is by effects artists the Chiodo Brothers. They talk about how Gamera and Godzilla influenced them to get into effects work. The last is an interview with August Ragone a writer and fan of Japanese cinema and pop culture. He wrote a book about Eiji Tsbaraya and he knows his stuff. He covers all things Gamera including the 1990s movies.

To be honest I haven't watched these since I got the set, so I don't remember them too well. But I was happy to finally get these episodes, since it sounded for the longest time that these were never going to see the light of day. So in that regard the movies themselves are worth the price of the set. But the amount of extras is actually pretty good for this type of series, and Shout! Factory has been great about putting extra effort into these sets.

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About Me

I'm a writer who loves movies, books, video games and music. Wow, that's pretty generic eh? Been a staff writer for DVD Verdict.com and animeondvd.com. I worked at a video store for nearly 10 years. Still working on genre fiction both short and novel length.